The War: Safety First, Then Democracy

Updated Sept. 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

In regard to Owen West's "Our New National Divide" (editorial page, Sept. 12): Most intellectual opponents of the war in Iraq focus exclusively on whether or not our military effort is getting Iraq closer to some kind of functioning democracy. And perhaps a decent argument can be made that the surge may not achieve this objective.

But this is not our fundamental objective in Iraq. Rather it is to contribute to our safety in the global war on terror. To obtain this objective we may have to put up with an unstable...